Jim Crace - The Gift of Stones

He passed the pot of headspin and, when she took it, dropped his hand onto her knee as if by chance. He said, ‘You’re cold.’ And then, ‘What can I do to keep you warm?’

‘Go out and light the fire,’ she said.

‘But there are men out there.’

‘So what?’ The drink had made her hard. ‘There are always men out there. Why should I go cold?’

‘You won’t go cold,’ he said with that breathless tenderness that women find so insincere and wearying. ‘I’ll keep you warm.’ He would have put his arm round her and hugged if he’d had an arm convenient for that. But he was sitting on the wrong side of her. His stump and her arm met, two different breeds. He turned his body to her and reached with his good arm for the hair behind her head. He put his head down on her shoulder and — almost breathless from the drink and fear and expectation — kissed her on the neck. He might as well have sat with his one arm round a tree and kissed the bark for all the interest that she showed.

‘You’re drunk,’ she said. ‘You’d better sleep.’ She pushed his head away. ‘Stop that.’ But father had her taste upon his lips, the dry and ashy flavour of her skin. He could not stop. He put his hand on to her leg and stroked her there, waiting for her Yes or the courage in his arm to touch the black and hidden thicket beneath her smock. She did not keep him waiting long. The instant that his hand found nerve enough to push her clothing back she brought the pot of headspin down upon his skull. The pot was shards. My father’s head — sobered and a little bruised — was drenched in drink. His eyes were stinging. His ears were ringing to the hubbub that she made in the darkness of the hut. ‘Get out. Go home,’ she said. ‘You don’t touch me!’

Of course, the child woke up. And screamed. The dog — so recently my father’s friend — snapped and growled at father’s legs. My father ran outside. His passion closed its wings and plummeted in a whiffling, spiral dive. He did not move. He was a stone. He heard her cursing to herself. He heard the sweep and slap of the dog’s tail. He heard the baby whimper on the breast, then sleep. All that was left was darkness, the spring wind off the sea, the guroo-guroo of nighttime geese, the distant, crackling fires of strangers on the heath. My father took deep breaths. His muscles tightened with the thought of killing her. His eyes were wet — with drink and tears and cold. He wished he was a horseman now with a fist like stone and a face like weathered bark. She’d love him then, for sure.

He could not guess how long he waited. Not long — but long enough for his skin to peg and button like a goose. He did not hanker now for her caresses or her love. He wanted only to win from her some recompense. He was the storyteller, don’t forget. He knew how to deepen any plot. And so he whispered in the night, his voice unsteady, wheedling, sly.

‘Rabbit. Rabbit. Doe. Sweet Doe. Come out.’ She came at once. She stood outside her door, a still black shape. He could not guess her mood.

‘I thought that we were friends,’ my father said.

‘What kind of friend are you?’ Her voice was angry still. ‘You think I want that kind of friend? I’ve plenty of that kind. They don’t come in my hut. But you I’ve treated as a brother and a son.’

‘You go with all those horsemen. Why not me?’

‘They pay. That’s why.’

‘I’ll pay.’

She held her hand out to her brother-son. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk.’

Who tells the truth about such things? Only crones and fools. My father’s version went like this: The woman, Doe, was sobered by remorse. The one-armed man who’d killed the goose and brought the goatskin gift and courted her was cold and drenched in drink and bruised about the head. She loosened all her strings and laces and at last paid back the kisses which he had invested on her neck. He’d leave it there. Such stories are best obscured by mist. The only details were the jokes at his or her expense. ‘You need two arms when you’re on top,’ he’d say, a clown who knew no shame. He’d demonstrate his lopsided, toppling passion on that night. He’d shudder, too, to mime the moment when, at last, his body emptied all its seed in Doe. And then the song he sang was this: How sad is he who has no wife. His seed is trapped. It turns to poison in his loins. His blood runs hot and burns. It dries his body and he leads a pale and angry life. But he who has a woman at his side? He is as carefree as an insect on the wing.

My father flapped his one good and his broken wing to illustrate the joy he felt the moment that he, with Doe, discharged the poison in his loins, the moment when the chrysalis of lust became the butterfly. ‘I felt nimble. I felt light,’ he said, dancing to the words. ‘Any man will say that sneezing in the night like that will bring good sleep. And when you wake, where is the fury and the sadness and the madness that you felt? All gone. The butterfly has flown.’

The truth, of course, is short of butterflies. We can presume, from what my father said on those few and candid times when we were on our own, that Doe and he remained good friends, and nothing more. When he returned to talk with her inside the hut the moment of affection was long past. The child was nervous in her sleep and stirring with bad dreams. The dog was wide awake and alert for signs that would require more barking and more bites. There were still men in gangs with sticks and bows upon the heath. The only kisses that would be given freely in that hut would be for her daughter’s lips, not his.

Although my father knew that if some horsemen came, right then, and called to her, she’d go to them — at once — he also recognized the force of what she’d said, ‘You don’t touch me! You think I want that kind of friend? I’ve plenty of that kind.’ He did not try again to put his hand upon her knee. Besides, the wind was driving back the stars and it was nearly dawn.

She’d said, Let’s talk. But Sleep is what she meant. My father did not sleep for long. He woke unsettled, mystified. The wind was racing now, the sort of wind that lifted slates from walls and sent Leaf’s hair on streaming errands from his head, the sort of wind that called, ‘Go home, go home. To your house and stone. Go home.’ The mist was low and moist and chasing inland with the wind. There was no sea. My father had some business to conclude. He went outside, the dog his one companion, and discharged his poison onto the buds and seedlings of the heath. It gathered, rolled and spongy, in the dew and hung in stringy tresses from the reeds. It formed its salty pools of sap amongst the vented lichens and the moss. My father — his one hand plenty for the task — was briefly lost amongst the ardours and the lecheries of a story of his own invention. The only sounds were the pantings of the man and dog and the bickerings of geese.

DOE AND her daughter were standing hand in hand, the child’s tiny arm a twig in Doe’s strong grip. My father rubbed his head to remind her of the night just past. But he had left the giblets of his lust for her hung up, like a screech owl’s breakfast, on the grasses and the reeds. He was entirely calm. He bent and kissed the child.

‘I could not sleep,’ he said. ‘I went down to the shore…’He would have entertained her with a greater lie. But, here, the dog began to whine and point its nose towards the distant wood. There were no braids of smoke. The gang of men who had slept there had spread themselves out in a line. Their bows were ready. Their sticks were out. They did not talk. They were advancing across the heath like heavy-shouldered wolves who’ve traced the scent of deer. The dog began to bark. It was too late to strap its jaw. It was too late to flee. The loop of men was tightening round the heath. My father, Doe, the girl, were minnows in their net.